


But I’ve never heard words like this in the night

by Age or Wizardry (ageorwizardry)



Category: Tenderness - Robert Cormier
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 09:38:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2807852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ageorwizardry/pseuds/Age%20or%20Wizardry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lori gets the urge to remove her life jacket just a few minutes later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But I’ve never heard words like this in the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [wishfulclicking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishfulclicking/gifts).



  
Where does this tenderness come from?  
And what will I do with it?  
—Marina Tsvetaeva  


* * *

She got to her feet, flinging her arms outward, calling to the wind, the sky, the water. “I’m Lori Cranston, queen of the sea. The happiest girl in the world…”

The canoe rocked dangerously beneath them.

I feel the canoe tip away under my feet, and then I’m falling. I hit the water with a confused _smack_ , parts of me trying to sink deeper into the water while the life jacket tries to pull me up. My legs are pulled farther down and my face is still stuck under the water for a few moments until I manage to right myself. My hair plasters my face as my head finally breaks the surface; I'm coughing and gasping and trying to scrape my hair away from my mouth and nose. 

When I catch my breath and clear my hair away from my eyes, I can see Eric in the canoe for the first time since I fell. I've never seen him look that way before. It's not the cold way he looked at me after I told him I’d seen him with the girl at the train track, or the lust with which he looked at the dark-haired girl on the sidewalk a few days ago. I can't put a name to it, but whatever it is, it looks as strong as either of them. 

"Here, grab the paddle," he commands, as he holds it out toward me. I grab it and hold on as he pulls me in towards him. When I’m close enough, he leans toward me to help me in, but the canoe tips too far in my direction, so he pulls back and leans over the other side of the canoe to balance me out. It feels like he’s farther away from me than I know he really is. I'm crying and struggling and I'm afraid I don't have the strength to pull myself in alone. 

"I can't do it, Eric!" I scream, as I drop back into the water and slam into the side of the canoe again.

"That's okay. We'll get you in anyway. We’ll... If you can't pull yourself in, just hold on to the edge while I paddle us in to shore. You can walk right out of the water there if you need to. It'll be okay." 

"I don't know if I can hold on that far..."

"You can do it; you won't have to swim, just hold on. The life jacket will hold you up and the canoe will take you there; they'll do all the work. All you have to do is hold on."

"I can't, I can't, I can't..." I'm still crying; I can hear the hitch in my voice and feel the breath scraping my throat and lungs—but it all seems more distant from me now, like I’m drifting away from it, or it’s drifting away from me. It feels like I might be stronger now, or maybe just that I’m not really feeling the pain of what’s happening to me. "Let me try one more time..." 

With a mighty heave and a lot of scrabbling I somehow pull myself in from the water, limbs awkward and everywhere. I end up on my back in the bottom of the boat with my head almost underneath one seat and my legs hooked over the other. My clothes are all wet, stuck to me, and I'm uncomfortable lying in all the water that came in along with me. I'm still gasping for breath and I'm sore all over and I'm sure I'll find scrapes and bruises when I get a chance to look myself over. I'm looking up into the sky, painted in colors from the approaching sunset with the clouds edged in gold. And into Eric's face, leaning over me. 

"You're okay," he says. His face still has that strange expression on it. 

I cough twice and nod. I'm still having trouble catching my breath, and the life jacket is tight across my top, too tight, so I start unfastening the buckles. Eric tangles his fingers in mine, stopping me, and says, "What are you doing? You _just fell in_."

"I can't breathe," I say. "I just want to breathe." He lets me keep the top buckle open, doesn't close it again for me, but he keeps his hand over it, bridging the two sides of the open vest. If it were anyone else, I'd expect him to try to look at my top through my wet shirt, or touch me under the life jacket, but Eric's hand on the life jacket isn't like that at all, and it's nice not to have to worry about things like that with him. Even though his hand is directly over my top, it doesn’t feel like he’s trying to touch me there. It feels like he’s putting his hand over my heart. I know they’re in the same place and I can’t explain the difference but I can feel it. It's as though he's guarding my open life jacket with his hand. 

"You have to stay safe," Eric says. Then he whispers again, softly—perhaps tenderly? "You have to stay safe..." 

"I am safe, Eric," I whisper back. "You saved me. And I won't sit up or do anything without the life jacket fastened, I promise. I just want to stay right here for now, with you." 

* * *

While Eric had always thought the police lieutenant was wrong about his being incapable of feeling, it was true that he rarely, if ever, felt so many things at once as he did right now. It was hard to think through the confusing whirl. His thoughts lighted again on his plans from earlier in the day to get rid of the girl, get her away from him, send her home, so he could move on. He no longer needed to fear that she would tell the police, or anyone, about Alicia Hunt. He knew that now. When she warned him about the policeman's trap at the fair, she had proved her loyalty and then some. But even as part of his mind worked on how to send her away, he found he also wanted to keep her close—this absurd protectiveness again. And he wanted to give her something, if he could... 

"You can kiss me, if you want to," he found himself saying, not understanding where the words came from even as he said them. 

Something in her eyes changed as she looked up at him, but she said nothing.

"You said, you said," he continued, stammering uncharacteristically, nervous and hating it, "you said you needed to kiss me, to end the fixation, you said you love me, so... do it. You can do it."

The girl reached up and traced his lips with one finger, gently, across one lip and then the other, and the look in her eyes was something like wonder. "You don't really want to kiss me," she said. Eric didn't know how to answer the question. Or if it was even a question. He wondered if he should kiss her fingertip as it moved across his lip. He stayed still. 

"No," she said at last. "No. You don't really want to touch me. That’s okay; that's part of what I like about you. No one else I was ever fixated on offered to let me kiss them, you know. They didn't have the chance; I didn't give them a choice. They didn't even know I was going to do it until I did it. You're different," she continued, as she took her hand from his lips, placed it over his hand where it still held her life jacket. "In so many ways. I've gotten to spend time with you; I've fallen in love with you... and now you offer to kiss me." She smiled. "And maybe that was only because you want to end my fixation so I'll go away. But it's not just a fixation anymore, like I told you, and whatever it is, I don't want it to end yet. So if I get a choice about it, no, I don't want to kiss you. Not yet. But maybe someday," she finished, eyes sparkling, "if you ever really want to." 

Eric wasn't sure what to make of this, how a gift refused could feel like he'd been given something in return. The girl was a puzzle, and never stopped being puzzling.

She, the only person who had ever knowingly offered herself up to his tenderness. He had been unable to kill her then, would perhaps be unable to kill her ever. And yet, what might he do with such an offer as hers? What possibilities might be presented by her uncommon willingness, if he could but see what they were?

Would they someday be able to find some new form of tenderness together?

Where they should travel in the following days, what might possibly happen the next time he needed or looked for tenderness with another girl, even whether they would sleep tonight beneath the stars or in a motel room—Eric found any thought of these future plans drifting away from him. Why even plan, when any plan he made would surely change around her? 

Probably they would want to return the canoe to shore before it grew completely dark; he thought no further ahead than this.

For now, he lay with the girl in the boat, watching her breath rise and fall, inexplicably comforted that it continued, as they drifted in the water and the sky darkened down into dusk.

Eric had no idea what would happen after that. He was looking forward to finding out.

**Author's Note:**

> The title and epigraph come from the poem [“Where does such tenderness come from?” by Marina Tsvetaeva](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poem/243626), translated by Ilya Kaminsky and Jean Valentine.
> 
> The italicized lines at the beginning of the story are, of course, quoted from the novel.
> 
> Because my brain works the way it does, I couldn't write this story without looking at lots of pictures to try to see if it's possible to do this in a canoe. Perhaps not in all canoes, but it looks like [some canoes do exist](http://www.wooden-canoes.com/gallery/kingfisher/pages/Copy%20of%201018.htm) where you can. If your brain works the same way mine does, I hope this satisfies you.


End file.
